Dear Editor,
I enjoyed reading Patrick Raftis’ editorial on April 15 entitled “Is growth good? Depends who you ask.” I have been exploring this issue for most of my adult life. I agree with the points you make in your piece and would like to offer a few additional thoughts.
Our economic system drives the mantra that “growth is good, or you will die.”
There has been lots of press in the local area over the past half century on the topic of what constitutes quality of life for our communities. We are fortunate to have the ability to consider the growth economic machine as a good or bad entity as we reside in an area of the world that is richly blessed.
The whole growth-is-good system is built on theory, not science. There is a false belief that the system we have in place will permit new development to pay for our new services; there is a problem with this, however, in that as a community becomes larger many changes take place, e.g., the services required/wanted become more sophisticated and costly, increasing costs of congestion, decreased access to clean air, water and land. There is much literature available considering the optimum size of a community to derive quality of life in health and happiness metrics. This sweet spot of “maximum community size” often considers matters of carrying capacity of the essentials of life, primarily local food and water supplies.
In terms of discussion of community growth, I hate it when some attempt to dumb the discussion down to simple expressions such as:
– “we need to provide places for new employment opportunities for our children or they will be forced to move elsewhere”;
– “we need new development to grow the local assessment base”; or
– “new growth will generate new tax/development charge revenue”; etc.
These thoughts are all quite simplistic and do not consider the total revenue/cost equations caused by growth. The comments are reflective of positive assertions of development, but they conveniently leave out costs of new growth.
I would encourage your readers to consider the following: if growth is good, then the largest cities in the world would be the best places to live. If you check differing rating services, few large cities rate near the top (Google search this, as it is an interesting exercise to see what “quality of life” characteristics are considered).
Bringing thoughts closer to Guelph-Wellington, the provincial development charges legislation does not require new development to cover all costs of growth – there are many formula offsets (service level calculations) and elements of community life (provision of affordable housing, hospital care) where the cost tab is not within the DC charge but instead is to be taken up by local ratepayers. For further insights on this, see work by the Neptis Foundation.
Development is very much a ponzi scheme whereby new activity is deemed to be necessary in order to pay for upgrades to existing crumbling community infrastructure, make new employment happen, and generate new sources of municipal tax revenue.
Something in the scheme is wrong, however, as evidenced by the massive community infrastructure deficits that are often cited by local government organizations (AMO), and with specific deficient community infrastructure issues being a favourite discussion topic, e.g., need for new water supply and sewage treatment plants, new roadways and transit systems.
A vicious cycle happens whereby communities never seem to catch up to the demands that growth requires. Many players are involved in the scheme: the government (province, municipalities), the development industry, uncaring or unconcerned citizens.
Growth for growth’s sake – think of a cancer cell here – is not a long-term viable proposition for overall community health and wellbeing.
Paul Kraehling,
Guelph